ASTRONOMY FOR 1889, 1890. 127 



A third installment of the catalogue, that containing the stars from 

 +64° 50' to +70° 10', has also appeared. The observations were made 

 by Professors Fearnley and Geelmuyden with the Ertel meridian, 

 circle of the Christiania Observatory, of 48 lines aperture. The prob- 

 able error of a single observation is giveu as i0*'.054 in right ascension 

 (±0\02 in a great circle) and ±0".54 in declination. 



YarnaWs catalogue. — A third edition of the catalogue of southern 

 stars observed with the transit instrument and mural circle at the 

 U. S. Naval Observatory from 1845 to 1877 has been published, the 

 work of revision having been conducted by Professor Frisb^'. Great 

 pains have been taken to eliminate all errata detected in the previous 

 editions, both by the careful examination of published lists of correc- 

 tions and by comparisons with other catalogues. The whole number 

 of stars in the new edition is 10,964. 



Munich catalogue. — Band 1 of the " Neue Annaleu der k. Sternwarte 

 in Bogenhausen bei Milnchen" contains a catalogue of 33,082 stars 

 down to the tenth magnitude inclusive, between — 32^ and 4-24° decli- 

 nation, reduced to the epoch 1880.0. The observations were made with 

 a Reich enbach meridian circle of 109'"'" (4.3 inches) aperture and 

 circle of 0.95™ (37.4 inches) diameter. 



Second Melbourne catalogue. — This catalogue contains the results of 

 observations made with the old transit circle of 5 inches aperture from 

 the beginning of 1871 to the end of August, 1884 ; places of 1,211 stars 

 are given for 1880. 



Brussels catalogue. — The Brussels catalogue contains 10,792 stars for 

 the epoch 18G5, observed with the Brussels transit instrument and 

 mural circle in the years 1857 — 1878 ; the general catalogue is preceded 

 by the positions of the fundamental stars used in the reductions. A 

 supplement is to be published giving corrections to the catalogue due 

 to a number of inaccuracies detected in the reductions. 



The Williams College catalogue of north polar stars. — Professor Saf- 

 ford has i^ublished a catalogue of right ascensions of 261 stars, mostly 

 within 10*^ of the north pole, and observed by him with the 4^-incli 

 Eepsold meridian circle of the Field Memorial Observatory at Williams- 

 town. The results have been reduced to the epoch 1885.0. Professor 

 Safford characterizes his catalogue as an " attempt to strengthen the 

 weak point of all our standard catalogues — the right ascensions of 

 polar stars," and he draws the following conclusions from his work. 



"First. That it is highly conducive to accuracy, systematic as well as 

 in detail, to base a catalogue of polar right ascensions upon standard 

 places in all hours of right ascension, rather than upon double transits 

 alone. 



" Second. That the introduction of meridian marks according to Struve 

 (long-focus object glasses, also suggested by Bittenhouse) is a great 

 advantage to the primary catalogues. 



